Picasso’s Bust of a Man with a Cigarette (1964)

To understand Picasso’s pastel drawing of a man with a cigarette, you need to think of it as a mirror. The figure may not resemble Picasso but he is an alter ego, wearing the same striped shirt Picasso so often wore. The man then holds his cigarette as Picasso would have held the paper-wrapped pastel the cigarette so closely resembles. He is thus drawing the very image we are looking at in a mirror or from the other side of a piece of glass. Either way, the painter paints himself.